In The Pines: At Halifax meeting, First Nations assess fresh land rights landscape

The first major Assembly of First Nations meeting since the landmark Supreme Court Case (SCC) ruling granting aboriginal land title begins today in Halifax, where organizers have said they’ll be weighing the implications of the decision, including the potentially enormous impact on pipeline development.

The June 26 ruling, which granted the Tsilhqot’in First Nation title to 1,700 square kilometres of disputed land, effectively denies provinces and the federal government legal strategies used to deny or reduce a title claim in past courtroom battles.

Now that those strategies are gone, the fight over Northern Gateway has begun in earnest with the Enbridge Inc. pipeline facing no less than nine court challenges from British Columbia First Nations, it was revealed yesterday.

An even more recent decision by the SCC will also likely figure prominently in debates on land title in Halifax. The case involving the Grassy Narrows First Nations deals with aboriginal communities which have signed historical treaties by the Crown – deals that were created before the era of modern land claims – and as director of indigenous governance at Ryerson University Hayden King explains, the put-down from the SCC in that case doesn’t mean the fight for legal reform on treaty lands is over.

Nearby in New Hampshire, U.S. environmentalists are making hay out of the possibility of Canadian oilsands-derived crude ending up in the northeastern U.S.. It’s not clear why they’re targeting the American side – all the public plans to bring Alberta fuel to the Atlantic coast stay on Canadian soil. Among those projects, TransCanada Corp.’s Energy East is the most prominent. The company bought the small Ontario town of Mattawa, which lies near the planned pipeline route, a fire rescue vehicle recently but the gift appears to have come with caveats that have locals worried over their ability to comment on the project. The Ottawa Citizen reports.

Some mixed news from the heart of oil country. The National Post‘s Claudia Cattaneo reports that juniors are benefitting from a great business climate: a low Canadian dollar, high oil and gas prices and lots of American money. But her colleague Jeff Lewis points that even in Alberta, Canadian producers are losing market share to U.S. sources. That can’t be helped by flooding in Saskatchewan that’s impacting drill rigs. On the natural gas side of things, the Vancouver Sun’s Vaughn Palmer seeks dark clouds for B.C. LNG in Reuters and the Wall Street Journal’s coverage of the Asian gas market.

In Ontario, the Bruce Deep Geologic Repository – a planned nuclear waste depot – is having a tough slog in its regulatory process. According to the Globe & Mail’s Shawn McCarthy, a retired nuclear scientist has found errors in Ontario Power Generation’s safety assessment of the project. In Toronto, the $1 billion in funding for a transportation link with the Ring of Fire mineral deposit in the province’s North survived in Monday’s re-tabled budget. It remains to be seen whether Ottawa will put money into developing the region too.

In environmental news, the Canada Parks and Wilderness Society’s (CPAWS) annual report concludes that the country’s wild areas are losing ground, even as the federal Conservative government has made conservation a key element in its oft-maligned environmental record. This summer’s wildfires in the northwest may be a chance for scientists to greater understand climate change impacts on the life-cycle of forests, the Globe’s science reporter, Ivan Semeniuk, explains. In Quebec, the Couillard government is setting up a climate change committee to help design policy, in a province where the portfolio is made complicated by a strong environmental base combined with a strong interest in developing its own fossil fuel resources. Unfortunately, CPAWS’ Quebec affiliate is saying that the province is going to miss its own targets for achieving cleaner air.

Quebec also announced an additional $60 million for the town of Lac-Megantic to help the region recover from last year’s crude oil train explosion that killed 47 people. In the U.S., the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is updating the rules for transporting hazardous rules in light of similar tragedies.

In interesting mid-summer transportation news, Iqaluit is gunning for a $65 million deep sea port to help prepare its vaunted status as a high Arctic resource industry hub, while nearby in northern Quebec a U.S. blimp company wants to help open that region to development.

While Canada might not be ground zero for the water scarcity crisis that is hitting business globally, this Financial Times investigation into the impacts of depleting water supplies on companies is seriously worth noting, not least of all for how it explains mining companies are tackling the issue.

And finally, while details are scarce, a safety incident was reported at a Regina refinery Sunday evening though no one was injured.